S10 Hard drive - maximum size?

This is my first time using the Lenovo forums and although this response is for the S-20 I have a follow on question but for the S-10. My apologies if this is an inappropriate place to post/reply but searching the posts this seemed as close to my situation as possible without starting a new thread.

I'm currently configured with the W7 Pro OS on it's own hard drive, and have the other bays populated with a pair of WD Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB hard drives setup RAID-1. I'd like to bump this up to the Caviar Black; however, before I drop any money on drives (returns are very difficult here in Viet Nam) I want to make sure of two things:

1] can the S-10 handle the 6 gb/s drives or should I stick with 3 gb/s?

2] can the S-10 handle a pair of 2 TB drives configured RAID-1?

Many thanks in advance for any assistance on this point. I live in Viet Nam and getting info out of the folks from Lenovo here can be somewhat problematic. ;-)

(mod note: split question into new discussion and updated title of post to match)

if you're upgrading because of speed then save your money. you won't notice much difference between the two. if you've filled up your 1TB drives then that would be a good reason to look into larger drives.

to answer your last question, the chipset on the motherboard is what limits your system to 3 Gbps. a third-party SATA controller or RAID card would be the only way to upgrade to 6 Gbps without purchasing a new system. but, again, 6 Gbps doesn't matter with mechanical hard drives. it will be a long time before they can saturate 3 Gbps.

Re: S20 Hard drive - maximum size?

Erik, thx much. Air-cooled Volkswagens I know well. The IT folks I've relied on for years here have basically tanked and I am beginning the odyssey of DIY on my computers for regular maintenance, repairs and upgrades. Whenever the pros fail me I feel I owe it to myself to become competent - but I will have a ways to go yet in this new realm.

As I've crusied through the forum looking at issues I've had I see a wealth of knowledge and willingness to share. This gives me hope for the future...and makes me really glad I put the money out for what has been the most reliable workhorse I've had since switching over to Windows ;-)

Re: S10 Hard drive - maximum size?

one caveat i'll make on the S10/S20 is that 6 Gbps drives aren't officially supported. some drives have had trouble gracefully switching to 3 Gbps mode, causing disconnections, or worse, dropping a drive from a RAID array. from personal experience i'd say this isn't a problem with newer hard drives and especially with most of the recent drive firmware revisions. with the drives you're considering you probably won't have any issues at all but it's only fair to bring up this point.

Re: S10 Hard drive - maximum size?

Erik is dead on about 6Gb/s. It's a selling point, and the only place you really start taking advantage of the higher bandwidth capability is with SAS drives (as they spin at 15k rpm) or SSDs. The bottleneck is really getting data off the disk and the limitation is simply how fast the drive can safely spin the disk. SSDs are really the devices that benefit from the greater bandwidth. 6Gb/s SSDs aren't all that common in the market at this point, but the transition is coming eventually. I'd have to go back and double check the data, but my suspicion is that 15k SAS drives will see a slight benefit to having the bigger pipe, but I don't think it compares to the benefit you'll see with SSDs.

Re: S10 Hard drive - maximum size?

I should have made clear at the beginning it was never a question of speed (I understand the gimmicking at this point in the process) but of availability (locally the vast majority of HDD are 6 gb/s) and compatibility in terms of the speed and especially the size.

One further question (and then we can lay this thread to rest ;-) - if i have a set of interrelated questions, which I do, is it best to break it up into pieces as several posts or post the whole enchilada in a logical, coherent form and let moderation break it up if they/as they see fit?

Re: S10 Hard drive - maximum size?

new and unique questions are best created as separate threads. this allows the author to mark threads as solved (assuming a solution is provided) and generate reusable content for the community.

if your question has to do with this topic then feel free to add onto this thread.

regarding availablity of specific models of HDDs, that makes sense. some companies have been tapering back on their "green" drive lineup and replacing them with standard 5400RPM offerings to cut down on SKUs.

just keep in mind that 7200RPM drives will be louder and hotter than low-RPM models. if acoustics are a concern then check manufacturer datasheets for both idle and seek acoustics. your S10 is around 25db. any drive idling below that should be for the most part inaudible except when seeking.

Re: S10 Hard drive - maximum size?

Erik, I will keep threads as clean and segregated as possible as per your suggestion.

I'm on E6850 and running about 35C on average for CPU temps and have all 7200 rpm drives installed and 2 of those are RAID 1, so I think at this point the operating temps are ok with the higher rpm drives: ambient noise levels in Viet Nam (plus we have an 8 month old baby) are far above 25db and I barely notice my S10, idle or seeking.